


One Morning

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Yes Minister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-21
Updated: 2005-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hacker is slow, Bernard possibly knows more than he is letting on, and Humphrey is impossibly swannish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Morning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Katisha

 

 

Jim Hacker held, in his hands, the fate of the Civil Service. He had been informed, by a group calling themselves the "Lucky Seven" that proof of breaking Clause 27 needed to be found! Well, he couldn't let these fellows, with their very own letterhead and fine paper go unanswered. Even if it meant some difficult dealings. Clause 27, why that was going into bedrooms! Hacker did not want to even consider letting proof of his own relations with his wife sent out. He was most puzzled.

So, he did the best thing he could.

"Sir Humphrey!" Hacker, Minister for the Department of Administrative Affairs and this morning, man without a cuppa to his name, called for his Secretary. This letter was really too much, for Hacker's barely-aware state, and Humphrey would help. The man had Hacker's best interests in mind.

Or someone's best interests, anyway. Hopefully those crossed with Hacker's.

"Humphrey!" He was going to get the man to come in, even it if meant scaling the walls and forcibly removing him from the mess. After a moment's consideration, Hacker remembered that in the mess, there was food. He'd seen it once, when walking by. The door had been shut in his face, but Hacker was pretty sure they hadn't meant to do it on purpose. He could get in now, he was Minister for the Department of Administrative Affairs!

Hacker faintly recalled that the mess was above the offices of government. He was sure that there was a remark to be made about that, but he couldn't figure it out. But the stage had been set. All he had to do now was get into that mess, find Humphrey, and possibly locate tea. Not difficult at all!

First, to get into the mess. Hacker knew that this would take cunning, but he figured he could probably do it on his own. He couldn't very well enter through the front door! Just the other week, he'd overheard Bernard and Humphrey discussing one of the backbenchers, and how the man had been kicked out the door for such indiscretions. He knew pretty well what that meant! He might be a Minister, but calling on his Secretary while the man was conducting meetings? Humphrey would have a fit, or as much as he was capable of having one, and likely organise a meeting in deepest Tooting to make his point. Hacker, most empathetically, did not want to be sent out there! He would have to sneak in.

The window was right out. This was about stealth, not getting caught halfway up Whitehall, with his tie flapping in the wind!

Hacker then hit on a brilliant idea. He could go through the floor! He'd sneak under the floor, go though a trap-door, and he was sure they had some, and manage to get his tea, and quietly, whisk Humphrey away, and sort out the disturbing letter he'd received. Now that the planning was done, the easy work of finding a way through his ceiling was next.

After a few hurried moments of looking around his office for a sufficiently tall object, Hacker spotted the oddly plain bookshelf that everyone seemed to insist was rococo. Being a student of economics, Hacker could only nod when this was mentioned. Whatever style it was, the bookshelf was tall, but with enough space between its top and ceiling that a midsized Minister could lie down, while getting though the trap door.

Hacker figured he would solve the problem of the trap door when he came to it.

When he tried to move the shelf away from the wall, to a more advantageous-to-climbing spot, it remained stubborn. After muttered insults, and several stubbed toes, Hacker made a tactical retreat to his desk chair. He would have to adapt his plan. He could simply climb the set of shelves where they stood, and then plan further. Nodding his head, Hacker nearly sprang over to it.

"Er, Minister?" As Hacker attempted to scale the bookshelf, his Personal Private Secretary, Bernard Woolley, entered. If Hacker had eyes in the back of his head, he would have seen that Bernard immediately came to attention, and was staring in such a way that seemed to say: "Oh dear, he's really going to do it! I can't stop him, the man is going to scrape that priceless bookshelf!"

Bernard was right, except that his value of priceless was significantly different than the rest of the world's. In this situation, priceless meant "over fifty-five pounds." This was at Humphrey's insistence, for the more objects that were deemed priceless, the more likely that special adjusters could come in, and the more people added to the cogs of government, the better.

Bernard privately suspected that the sentence could have done with a bit more elaboration, rather than ending on that messy adjective. When he'd asked about this, several moments later, Sir Humphrey had looked at him like he was daft, and mumbled something about stopping mechanisms, but he wasn't an engineer, and stop looking like that. Bernard had let that hideous grammatical mistake go, for his superior was clearly under much stress, trying to walk in a straight line, after a meeting with the Minster of Health's Secretary.

"Bernard! Just the man I needed to see!" Scrabbling around the corner of the shelf, Hacker talked, without ever looking at Bernard.

"On the matter of what business, Minister?" Bernard backed away from Hacker and the slowly wobbling shelf. Bernard knew exactly what was going to happen, and he was not going to be found responsible for the Minster's untimely broken legs. He couldn't very well talk the man down from his insanity, so it was better to wait it out. Preferably in a different room.

"I must find Sir Humphrey!" Halfway to his goal, Hacker waved his arms for emphasis, and suddenly found himself on the floor. He felt rather like a turtle, who, suddenly finding himself on his back, is helpless to do anything but wiggle arms and legs. This feeling was not assisted by the sudden appearance of Bernard's face, which, when looked at upside down, gave Hacker something of a shock.

Bernard figured discretion was the better part of valour, and did not comment on Hacker's current state. Any remarks, Bernard guessed, correctly, would involve a heavy dosage of "Er" and "Ah" and would tell him very little as to why the Minster seemed fit for Bedlam.

He could not, however, resist the temptation for one question. "Minister, does this have any relation to the Minister of Health's Personal Private Secretary?" As Hacker opened his mouth to speak, Bernard smiled disarmingly and offered a hand up.

"What does he have to do with anything?" Rising, Hacker shook his head, and looked down at Bernard. Hacker was well and truly mystified, and did not bother attempting to hide this.

Taking pity on the Minster, Bernard endeavored to explain his reference in terms that hacker could understand. In a cynical moment, Bernard might have used the term "two syllables or fewer" but he was feeling charitable. "Well, Minister, he's something of a drunkard." Hacker looked stunned.

"We are discussing the same man, correct? Short fellow, round-ish, works in the office that was behind all those silly regulations about extra VAT, and locking down pubs? The man can't have wanted to bring those all in. He could have stopped the laws, he's the Minster's own Secretary! It's preposterous!" Bernard began to speak, but Hacker cut him off. "Why, it's impossible to get down to the pub and have a drink these days. I nipped out, and my local was shut, all due to these new laws. You're telling me that a Secretary would shoot himself in the foot like that?" Hacker took a moment to breathe, and Bernard jumped in.

"Personal Private Secretary, and Minister, he has not shot himself in the foot recently, that I am aware of. It is simply that a loophole has been supplied in the law, at the Minister of Health's insistence." Hacker gestured for Bernard to continue. "I believe that if you are already visibly intoxicated, and can still show your Westminster identification, you receive free drinks, at many pubs, including your favourite, the Clarence.

Hacker nodded weakly. This was exactly the sort of clauses which were added to bills. He was back on familiar ground. He also anticipated many pints in the future.

Experience shows, however, that the moment things seem to be going swimmingly, a new disaster will appear.

Sir Humphrey entered.

"Good morning, Minster, Bernard."

Hacker looked at him, stunned into silence. This was the man he had nearly broken his legs for, and now, he had arrived! Without any prompting whatsoever! Hacker nearly proclaimed it a good day, until he remembered the odd letter, which had begun the whole bookshelf ordeal. He was also reminded that it was only eleven in the morning, and many disastrous things could happen.

Concurrently, Bernard was thinking about the likelihood of gin being smelled on the Minster's breath, which he believed was high. This line of thinking had begun the discussion of the Minister of Health's Personal Private Secretary, and Bernard was contemplating how long it would take for Sir Humphrey to discover this.

"Over a leisurely breakfast meeting, I have been informed of urgent business. Would you like to be briefed now or later, Minister?" Humphrey drew papers out of his case, with, Hacker noticed, something of a flourish.

"I have received a very disturbing letter, Sir Humphrey, and need guidance on it before any urgent business!" Raising his voice, Hacker found, was a good strategy to cow civil servants, except that Humphrey didn't look cowed, he looked...like someone out of a special supplement, the kind with titles like "Therapeutic Pleasure" and "Happy Pills- Not Just For Criminals!" Hacker was worried.

Bernard opened up his own case, and began work, surreptitiously listening. He was anticipating how this newest situation would progress. He found it helpful to think of these moments as dinner theatre, without the good wine.

"The nature of this very important letter would be what, exactly? We can never be too careful, after all, and the very nature of our office, and my work, is of the highest order to the serenity of our nation." Seeing Hacker's worried smile, Humphrey continued. "Civil servants form the backbone of our great nation, and it diminishes the more ample elements, akin to the spleen, of the elected government, including yourself, Minister, to put our safety at risk. I suggest that you unburden yourself, and this immensely frightening letter, to me." Humphrey smiled beatifically.

Hacker handed over the letter. He figured Humphrey, with superior experience in these situations, would know what to do. It seemed as though all those years in the civil service had given Humphrey many talents, for his statements almost mirrored the demands made in the letter, or at least, the ones that he could understand. But this was the civil service at its best, Hacker fondly thought, predicting what you needed, and seeing that it was started. Not finished, of course.

The actual grand tradition of the civil service had been fulfilled by Sir Humphrey earlier. He had jogged into the Office of Culture, Media and Sport, when they had been busy watching the match between Doncaster and Arsenal, Sir Humphrey had paid no heed to them, and simply rifled through the important inter-office memos, reading the pertinent ones, and discarding those he declared junk.

Pretending to read, Humphrey nodded to himself. He found that it helped to be somewhat underestimated, and let Hacker imagine that all his correspondence was not widely distributed.

"Minster, it seems that the only way to cope with this is to acquiesce to their demands, even though they are not strictly tasteful to the modern sensibility. However, we will triumph over this, for I am sure of such. It cannot be long until this group, understandably and predictably on the fringe of actual and normal interaction, will bow to our superior and overwhelming bureaucratic weight."

"That seems to explain it?" Hacker, in times of great confusion and stress, let his voice lilt upwards. Bernard looked up from his work, and Humphrey and he shared a conspiratorial smile, unbeknownst to Hacker.

Humphrey almost sighed at the ease of convincing Hacker of his point.

"Yes, I would put up a protest, but one needs to do certain things for one's country," Humphrey gave Hacker a benevolent smile. "Bernard and I..."

Bernard interrupted: "Sorry, Sir Humphrey, it would be "Bernard and me," actually." Spotting Humphrey's angry look, Bernard quickly looked back to his work.

"As I was saying, before that outburst, and Bernard, I can just take someone for the typing pool if you're feeling disagreeable," at this, Bernard shook his head furiously. "Well, fine. We will nobly go off, and do this task. Goodbye, Minster."

Humphrey stood up, and began to walk out the door, learning over to whisper into Bernard's ear. Hacker couldn't hear what was said, but he saw that Bernard's face positively lit up, and he followed Sir Humphrey out the door.

Hacker wondered where he could get a pint.

 

 

 


End file.
